remains, Miss Alice will go to school immediately, and a stronger, firmer hand than Amberley's shall be paid to crush the naughtiness out of her. The governor, as I have more than once remarked, is a man of action, and in an incredibly short space of time he has found a school and schoolmistress after his own heart and pattern. All preliminaries are arranged, the day for her departure is fixed, and to us all there is nothing left to do but to lament. All too soon the day and hour come round, and we crowd about her with our kisses and farewells; weeping in every degree, deeply and bitterly, loudly and effusively, silently and painfully, each according to our several natures; every one down to the babies furnishing his or her quota to the stream. "Good-bye, lovely sister, good-bye." For how many weary, long months shall we see your sweet face no more?
CHAPTER IX.
"Love is a familiar, love is a devil; there is no evil angel but love. Yet Samson was so tempted, and he had an excellent strength: yet was Solomon so seduced, and he had a very good wit."
It was a year ago that I waved my nightcap out of the window at Alice's lovers; she has left school altogether now, and is home for good. She has been the terror of her schoolmistress, the admiration of her school-mates, the delight of her pastors, masters, and every pair of male eyes that have lit upon her, in the straight and narrow precincts of her sheltered, quiet life; and now she has come back to us lovelier, waywarder, more bewitching than ever. Strictly speaking we are at home; we are not at St. Swithins, whither papa, having no very pleasant memory of Periwinkle, has brought us for the holidays, and for the setting-up of mother's health, which of late has been indifferent.
St. Swithins is a long, long way from Silverbridge, and the governor's doughty reputation, not having spread so far, the resi-
